Fallout 4 - Possible Frame Rate Issue Fix

[MEC-777]

So for those of you having issues with severe frame rate drops (example: drops to 30fps or below in certain locations, while looking at certain buildings down) for no apparent reason (GPU and CPU usage nowhere near 100%), the issue could very well simply be the shadow distance setting in the graphics settings.

 

On my own system I can run with the following setting and maintain 60fps+ with occasional dips into the 50's.

 

-1440p

-Ultra preset 

-Motion blur off

-Shadow distance at medium

-Tessellation override in CCC at 32x

 

Now, after some experimenting I found that even with turning shadow distance up to high, just tanked the frame rates down into the 40's and even into the 30's. Turned it back to medium and 60fps solid.  

 

So there's something going on with the shadow distance optimization. I don't know if this is just an AMD GPU related issue (if you want to test it, by all means, please report your results. But only if you've been having frame rate issues) as I'm running it on a single 290. I know it should be able to handle shadow distance on high or ultra, but I'm wondering if this has something to do with gameworks... Two friends of mine, one runs a 980Ti and the other a 680, are running the game at 1080p ultra and high presets, respectively and have not observed such frame rate issues with shadow distance set to high or ultra. That's why I'm wondering if it might be gameworks related.

 

Someone over on Overclock.net discovered this and it worked for me, so I thought I'd share it here.  

[Gale]

Yeah, AMD cards seem to hate Fallout 4.

[Commander_Z]

Yeah, AMD cards seem to hate Fallout 4.

 

AMD hates gamers in general

[charlezprice]

Yeah, AMD cards seem to hate Fallout 4.

It seems as if the hate is mutual, Fallout 4 seems to hate AMD cards and AMD cards seem to hate Fallout 4 D:

[Praesi]

I have those drops too. With my Card kind of ridiculous. But Gsync safe the day.

[Monarch]

So for those of you having issues with severe frame rate drops (example: drops to 30fps or below in certain locations, while looking at certain buildings down) for no apparent reason (GPU and CPU usage nowhere near 100%), the issue could very well simply be the shadow distance setting in the graphics settings.

 

On my own system I can run with the following setting and maintain 60fps+ with occasional dips into the 50's.

 

-1440p

-Ultra preset 

-Motion blur off

-Shadow distance at medium

-Tessellation override in CCC at 32x

 

Now, after some experimenting I found that even with turning shadow distance up to high, just tanked the frame rates down into the 40's and even into the 30's. Turned it back to medium and 60fps solid.

 

So there's something going on with the shadow distance optimization. I don't know if this is just an AMD GPU related issue (if you want to test it, by all means, please report your results. But only if you've been having frame rate issues) as I'm running it on a single 290. I know it should be able to handle shadow distance on high or ultra, but I'm wondering if this has something to do with gameworks... Two friends of mine, one runs a 980Ti and the other a 680, are running the game at 1080p ultra and high presets, respectively and have not observed such frame rate issues with shadow distance set to high or ultra. That's why I'm wondering if it might be gameworks related.

 

Someone over on Overclock.net discovered this and it worked for me, so I thought I'd share it here.

 

It's not optimization, and it has nothing to do with Gameworks. High and Ultra shadow distance double the amount of draw calls the game makes compared to medium distance. AMD has lower draw call throughput in the driver, so that's why their performance suffers more. These latest AAA titles, especially open world ones, are limited already by the D3D11 API. Unity, Arkham Knight, Watch Dogs, even Dying Light before they significantly reduced draw distance. These were all victims of an outdated API. I'm not saying they didn't have other problems, but this was the main issue and the culprit is the API.

[MEC-777]

I have those drops too. With my Card kind of ridiculous. But Gsync safe the day.

 

Can you do us a favor and try it with just turning shadow distance down to medium and reporting back if the frame rate drops went away or at least are less severe? Would just help to get more data to confirm this if other people can test this out as well.

 

It's not optimization, and it has nothing to do with Gameworks. High and Ultra shadow distance double the amount of draw calls the game makes compared to medium distance. AMD has lower draw call throughput in the driver, so that's why their performance suffers more. These latest AAA titles, especially open world ones, are limited already by the D3D11 API. Unity, Arkham Knight, Watch Dogs, even Dying Light before they significantly reduced draw distance. These were all victims of an outdated API. I'm not saying they didn't have other problems, but this was the main issue and the culprit is the API.

 

So you're basically saying we're hitting the limits of DX11 in certain aspects (shadow detail optimization for example)? 

[Praesi]

Can you do us a favor and try it with just turning shadow distance down to medium and reporting back if the frame rate drops went away or at least are less severe? Would just help to get more data to confirm this if other people can test this out as well.

 

 

So you're basically saying we're hitting the limits of DX11 in certain aspects (shadow detail optimization for example)? 

Confirmed. With Shadowdistance medium the drops are reduced alot. On a spot the frames went down to 35 it stays now at min.70. (1440p everything else max)

[stconquest]

This was done on another thread almost a week ago... 1 sec...

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/482418-r9-390-fallout-4-optimization/

 

The info is deeper in.

[Praesi]

This was done on another thread almost a week ago... 1 sec...

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/482418-r9-390-fallout-4-optimization/

 

The info is deeper in.

If i would read every AMD Problem Thread, i would not have any time left to play the Game.

[stconquest]

If i would read every AMD Problem Thread, i would not have any time left to play the Game.

 

Hold on, I found the page:  http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/482418-r9-390-fallout-4-optimization/page-10

 

...near my post. 

[Monarch]

So you're basically saying we're hitting the limits of DX11 in certain aspects (shadow detail optimization for example)? 

 

We're hitting the draw call limit of DX11 in general. Doesn't matter what the objects are, there's just more draw calls for a CPU to make than it is able to under DX11. So less shadows to draw = less draw calls for the CPU to make = higher framerates. 

[MEC-777]

Confirmed. With Shadowdistance medium the drops are reduced alot. On a spot the frames went down to 35 it stays now at min.70. (1440p everything else max)

 

Awesome. Thanks for the confirmation.

 

This was done on another thread almost a week ago... 1 sec...

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/482418-r9-390-fallout-4-optimization/

 

The info is deeper in.

 

Didn't see that thread before I started this one.

[EChondo]

I have a R9 390 and even though my framerate improves with Shadow Distance at Medium, I'm still getting massive frame drops in cities/Corvega Factory.

 

I've been reading on Reddit and people with 980's/980ti's are having the exact same issues. I've also seen people with 290's/390's/390x's etc. not have these issues.

 

So I don't think it's AMD bias, it just seems that for a 1/4-1/2 of us have these issues for whatever reason.

 

Hell I launched the game with Low settings at 800x450 in Windowed Mode and I cannot go above 45fps overlooking Lexington at the top of the Corvega Factory. Like give me a break, there's no way there is a hardware bottleneck when I can't get 60fps on Low at the lowest resolution possible.

 

We're hitting the draw call limit of DX11 in general. Doesn't matter what the objects are, there's just more draw calls for a CPU to make than it is able to under DX11. So less shadows to draw = less draw calls for the CPU to make = higher framerates. 

Now that you mention it, this is probably the issue. Too many things that need to be rendered so the game slows down even though our hardware isn't being used fully. Something is just wrong with the game.

[xAcid9]

Yup, draw calls is the problem. Confirmed by ENBdev.

19 november 2015

Frequently Fallout 4 players asking how to improve performance in the cities. The answer is simple - reduce drawing distance of shadows, because game have bottleneck of draw calls count and in some camera directions i've seen more than 12000 draw calls. Overclocking CPU helps a little with this, but only for Intel users, for AMD it's not scales well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One guy from Guru3D forum uploaded few save files of "choke points" where he get erratic FPS. Maybe you can give it a test.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=403772&page=19

 

 

There's is in an incoming patch for the game still in beta state, but i doubt it fix the draw calls issue. 

[lxyfutures]

Yeah...Frame drop and I don't know why. I was looking forward to Crossfire support but I'm not sure if AMD will release a crossfire profile.

[App4that]

Yeah...Frame drop and I don't know why. I was looking forward to Crossfire support but I'm not sure if AMD will release a crossfire profile.

You don't really need one. Just run default and adjust the DPI of your mouse during lock picking and hacking.

[totjup5]

After applying an SLI ix with nvidia inspector I've had no problems maintaining 60fps at 1440p maxed settings. 

[MEC-777]

I have a R9 390 and even though my framerate improves with Shadow Distance at Medium, I'm still getting massive frame drops in cities/Corvega Factory.

 

I've been reading on Reddit and people with 980's/980ti's are having the exact same issues. I've also seen people with 290's/390's/390x's etc. not have these issues.

 

So I don't think it's AMD bias, it just seems that for a 1/4-1/2 of us have these issues for whatever reason.

 

Hell I launched the game with Low settings at 800x450 in Windowed Mode and I cannot go above 45fps overlooking Lexington at the top of the Corvega Factory. Like give me a break, there's no way there is a hardware bottleneck when I can't get 60fps on Low at the lowest resolution possible.

 

Now that you mention it, this is probably the issue. Too many things that need to be rendered so the game slows down even though our hardware isn't being used fully. Something is just wrong with the game.

 

Yeah, it's optimization-related issues. I don't understand it completely, but something is causing far too many draw calls or something with regards to the lighting/shadows, making it heavily single-threaded during those moments. Not much we can do about it at this point, other than adjust the settings we know are effected by it. 

 

Last night the game wasn't running as it should for me. It does this now and then and I'm not sure why. I wasn't getting the severe frame rate drops like before, but the GPU usage was fluctuating and the frame rate was jumping from the mid 40's to 60 and was very inconsistent. Could really notice it while walking as it felt like my walking pace kept speeding up/ slowing down. Was driving me nuts. This only started once I entered a new part of the map where I'd never been yet before, so I wonder if it had anything to do with that. It shouldn't though. Might have been related to MSI AB settings too though. Have to check...

 

The game has issues, that we know for sure. Reducing shadow distance definitely helps, so at least there's that. It's no excuse, though. I agree. Hope this new patch yields some improvements.    

 

Yeah...Frame drop and I don't know why. I was looking forward to Crossfire support but I'm not sure if AMD will release a crossfire profile.

 

Try reducing shadow distance to medium and see if that helps the frame drops.

 

There is no crossfire profile for this game and probably never will be. There isn't for SLI either. The game engine is the same as Skyrim and there was never a CF profile for that either. But you never know, they may surprise us. (fingers crossed). I'm running it on a single 290 which is more than enough to run it at 1440p ultra and maintain 60fps most of the time. So with your 390X you should have no issues doing the same. Just make sure you keep shadown distance at medium or the frame rate will tank in certain locations.

[zackjay21]

i had amd to had to switch !

[MEC-777]

i had amd to had to switch !

 

Care to elaborate?